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WATCH: Chasing Ice
In the spring of 2005, acclaimed environmental photographer James Balog headed to the Arctic on a tricky assignment for National Geographic: to capture images to help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. Even with a scientific upbringing, Balog had been a skeptic about climate change. But that first trip north opened his eyes to the biggest story in human history and sparked a challenge within him that would put his career and his very well-being at risk.
The Link Between Armed Conflict and Climate Change
When one of the strongest El Niños ever recorded hit the South American country of Peru in 1982, the abnormal warming it brought to the Pacific Ocean was a catastrophic blow to the already economically fragile nation. The fishing industry quickly suffered massive losses as the anchovy harvest collapsed and the sardines suddenly migrated south into Chilean waters.
2016 to be the hottest year on record
This past May was the warmest May month in a 137-year period, breaking global temperature records, according to a report published Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Climate Change Is Worse Than We Think
This is part of a series on the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, in collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This article focuses on goal 13 – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Climate Change Affects Your Brain Too
We have a pretty good idea of what climate change will do to the landscape: melt it, flood it, tear it up in freak superstorms, turn it into desert. But what will climate change do to us—to our bodies and minds?
12 Months of Record Warming
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), April 2016 was the 12th consecutive month to break previous heat records, breaking the 1901-2000 long-term average by a record amount.
April Continues to Break Global Temperature Records
April was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records, Nasa figures show. Last month smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever, the data show. That makes it three months in a row that the monthly record was broken by the largest margin ever.
Our Brains Weren’t Meant to Deal with Climate Change
Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedantam takes you on vacation with him to Alaska. You’ll hike on top of a glacier, drink from a cool stream, and talk with fellow tourists from around the world. But the trip comes with an upsetting observation: Glaciers in Alaska are retreating. The Mendenhall glacier, visited by tens of thousands of tourists each year, has receded more than a mile and a half in the last half century.
A Climate Exodus In Africa And Middle East
Stocktrek Images Via Getty Images
Stocktrek Images Via Getty Images
“Scorching temperatures brought on by climate change could leave large swaths of the Middle East and North Africa uninhabitable by the middle of this century, a new study predicts.
Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia crunched the numbers and found that this area, a ‘climate change hotspot ‘where days of extreme heat have doubled since 1970, could soon be plagued by weather so brutal that it triggers a ‘climate exodus.'”
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry
Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.
